Tuesday, July 26, 2005

So the dhimmi Stalinists at the Guardian rag commissioned a poll to tell us how threatened Moslems feel nowadays, and the headline reflects that-

"Two-thirds of Muslims consider leaving UK "

I considered running marathons and it made me feel faint. But reading on down to the very bottom of the article, we find

"A small rump, potentially running into thousands, told ICM of their support for the attacks on July 7 ..."

Orright, there are over 1,500,000 Moslems in Britain. I looked at the PDF of the raw data, and FIVE PERCENT of the respondents told a stranger that "further attacks by British suicide bombers in the U. K. are justified". Not to be expected (that was 33%), or understandable, but JUSTIFIED.

Now my math is that 5% of a million and a half actually does run into exactly seventy five thousand.

Without speculating on how many bomb cheerleaders lied to the poll, that gives a pretty good recruiting and support base. If I had a product to sell and I could identify a population with 5% who already wanted to buy it, I'd be rich. It's a marketer's dream.

Eliminate oldsters and children, and one or two out of every 20 british Moslems thinks MORE BOMBS ARE JUSTIFIED.

20 Moslems working in your office or living in your building? One of them thinks that more bombs are right and proper.

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Usually I see the worst in human behaviour in my work. Yesterday was a change. I was prosecuting a car theft, an older couple had their car stolen. The thief was a neighbour child, single mother, 16 years old, directionless. The victims had sort of adopted him- bought him clothes, spent time with him. He repaid them by stealing and destroying their car, $11,000 worth.

Little weasel pled guilty. I announced the plea, the restitution amount and my standard reccommendation of an order that the defendant have no future contact with the victims or their property.

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

I hear, and issue, complaints that Moslems who oppose murder don't say so loudly enough. Here's an exception, not reported on any of the conservative blogs I read, not on U. S. news that I saw-

"More than 500 British Muslim religious leaders and scholars have issued a fatwa in response to the London bombs.

Gul Mohammad, secretary general of the British Muslim Forum, quoted the Koran saying: "Whoever kills a human being ... then it is as though he has killed all mankind; and whoever saves a human life it is as though he had saved all mankind."

He went on: "Islam's position is clear and unequivocal: murder of one soul is the murder of the whole of humanity; he who shows no respect for human life is an enemy of humanity.

"We pray for the defeat of extremism and terrorism in the world. "

The fatwa was read out at Parliament square and will be read at prayers on Friday. These Imams are all named as signatories and have been on television undisguised. They are taking a real personal and professional risk to stand against murder and they should be noticed and praised.

In 1940, the British empire stood alone. Defeated in war, unable to prevent the hun from bombing London, the great Churchill made a virtue out of endurance. Dunkirk and the East End became examples because Britain's weakness meant they could not be avoided.

But Churchill knew that the making of virtue from necessity was a dangerous fraud. "Wars are not won by evacuation", he said; and when he spoke of the finest hour and the debt owed the few, he referred to those who killed Nazis, not those who nazis killed. And when he did pay tribute to our endurance he always made it clear that the first goal was testing the enemy's ability to do the same.

Bliar, Livingstone, and all the other bien pensant accommodators are weak. They are wrong to only speak of how good we are at suffering. It sends a bad message to our enemies and a worse one to us.

Our culture has become so obsessed with the virtues of the downtrodden that we now see being beaten as morally better than winning victory. We have such contempt for the things that gave us success- lack of nuance, focus on the goal, self confidence - that we forget that others have and value these things. The enemies- moslems, Chinese tyrants, or whoever- DO live in a black and white world. THEY know weakness when they see it. It's good to not be afraid, I suppose. But what good is it in isolation? Better that we should be feared.

It's the old story. We are better than they are, and we really do try to avoid wholesale slaughter. Maybe they will shrink before our moral power. It's a nice fantasy. "London can take it, we'll go back to the desert now."

Saturday, July 09, 2005

Americans have always been self focussed and not had much historical perspective. And since the 1960s when we collectively decided to stop teaching and start self esteeming in schools it's been worse. Now it's like we are dogs, every day is a surprise.

Whatever is in front of our faces is the ONLY THING THAT EVER WAS OR EVER WILL BE. Some woman lost in Aruba, airplanes crashing into buildings, a has been football player on trial, it's all the same.

But there is a future, and I've been thinking that all this terrorism / war on terror is an interesting rehersal and test bed.

For our real future competitors.

I expect the general staffs in Peiking, Moscow, and Delhi- as well as Teheran and the forests of Colombia- are watching with interest. This is what they do when you crash into their buildings, shoot a dozen people from the trunk of a car, fight a war, or get accused of flushing a book down a toilet. This is how we defend our borders.

If I was on those staffs I might be concluding that we are no longer serious people. Look at it from their perspective. The west has the ability to totally overpower the Arabs. Yet a collection of desert nomads who can barely work an electric generator hold us hostage to the tune of billions. If China had our navy, the oil would be shipped east for nothing. We conquer Iraq, and assign our very effective army to patrolling for men with rifles. Foreigners conspire to slaughter our people, and we make fools of ourselves extending our incomprehensible legal rights to them. Four bombs in London, and we apologise to the murderers' coreligionists.

I might be wondering if a couple of snipers or kidnaping some brides could draw our focus better than, say, annexing Taiwan.

Friday, July 08, 2005

they didn't go through the wars of religion and so don't have a cultural revulsion to same; and

they mistake forbearance for weakness, because they would not forbear.

The Germans killed a quarter of their OWN PEOPLE fighting over religious trivia in the 30 years war. I strongly suggest that intelligent or self preservationist moslems consider that statistic before approving of those picking a religious war. And that those who live in the west choose to be our allies openly and obviously.

We are nice and kind fat and soft and ridden with unearned guilt. We also have a history of savage bloodshed that makes the earth blanch.

We are horrified by what our own civilization did as recently as 1914-18 and 39-45. But we DID do it, and there are plenty of men still living who found it possible to incinerate cities full of white European babies, or throw them screaming into gas chambers for that matter. Enough of their grandchildren can be found to push the buttons.

Forbearance and measured response are still what we are doing, but we might decide they aren't effective.

And OUR jihad won't just blow up a handful of buildings and a bar and some trains and a bus. Everybody loses in a war, but some lose more than others.

Thursday, July 07, 2005

An interview with a startlingly honest African. Economist James Shikwati:

SPIEGEL: Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa...

Shikwati: ... for God's sake, please just stop.

SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.

Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.

SPIEGEL: Do you have an explanation for this paradox?

Shikwati: Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa's problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn't even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid.

SPIEGEL: Even in a country like Kenya, people are starving to death each year. Someone has got to help them.

Shikwati: But it has to be the Kenyans themselves who help these people. When there's a drought in a region of Kenya, our corrupt politicians reflexively cry out for more help. This call then reaches the United Nations World Food Program -- which is a massive agency of apparatchiks who are in the absurd situation of, on the one hand, being dedicated to the fight against hunger while, on the other hand, being faced with unemployment were hunger actually eliminated. It's only natural that they willingly accept the plea for more help. And it's not uncommon that they demand a little more money than the respective African government originally requested. They then forward that request to their headquarters, and before long, several thousands tons of corn are shipped to Africa ...

SPIEGEL: ... corn that predominantly comes from highly-subsidized European and American farmers ... Ruandan President Kagame has over a million deaths on his conscience, says Shikwati.

Shikwati: ... and at some point, this corn ends up in the harbor of Mombasa. A portion of the corn often goes directly into the hands of unsrupulous politicians who then pass it on to their own tribe to boost their next election campaign. Another portion of the shipment ends up on the black market where the corn is dumped at extremely low prices. Local farmers may as well put down their hoes right away; no one can compete with the UN's World Food Program. And because the farmers go under in the face of this pressure, Kenya would have no reserves to draw on if there actually were a famine next year. It's a simple but fatal cycle.

SPIEGEL: If the World Food Program didn't do anything, the people would starve.

Shikwati: I don't think so. In such a case, the Kenyans, for a change, would be forced to initiate trade relations with Uganda or Tanzania, and buy their food there. This type of trade is vital for Africa. It would force us to improve our own infrastructure, while making national borders -- drawn by the Europeans by the way -- more permeable. It would also force us to establish laws favoring market economy.

SPIEGEL: Would Africa actually be able to solve these problems on its own?

Shikwati: Of course. Hunger should not be a problem in most of the countries south of the Sahara. In addition, there are vast natural resources: oil, gold, diamonds. Africa is always only portrayed as a continent of suffering, but most figures are vastly exaggerated. In the industrial nations, there's a sense that Africa would go under without development aid. But believe me, Africa existed before you Europeans came along. And we didn't do all that poorly either.

SPIEGEL: But AIDS didn't exist at that time.

Shikwati: If one were to believe all the horrorifying reports, then all Kenyans should actually be dead by now. But now, tests are being carried out everywhere, and it turns out that the figures were vastly exaggerated. It's not three million Kenyans that are infected. All of the sudden, it's only about one million. Malaria is just as much of a problem, but people rarely talk about that.

SPIEGEL: And why's that?

Shikwati: AIDS is big business, maybe Africa's biggest business. There's nothing else that can generate as much aid money as shocking figures on AIDS. AIDS is a political disease here, and we should be very skeptical.

SPIEGEL: The Americans and Europeans have frozen funds previously pledged to Kenya. The country is too corrupt, they say.

Shikwati: I am afraid, though, that the money will still be transfered before long. After all, it has to go somewhere. Unfortunately, the Europeans' devastating urge to do good can no longer be countered with reason. It makes no sense whatsoever that directly after the new Kenyan government was elected -- a leadership change that ended the dictatorship of Daniel arap Mois -- the faucets were suddenly opened and streams of money poured into the country.

SPIEGEL: Such aid is usually earmarked for a specific objective, though.

Shikwati: That doesn't change anything. Millions of dollars earmarked for the fight against AIDS are still stashed away in Kenyan bank accounts and have not been spent. Our politicians were overwhelmed with money, and they try to siphon off as much as possible. The late tyrant of the Central African Republic, Jean Bedel Bokassa, cynically summed it up by saying: "The French government pays for everything in our country. We ask the French for money. We get it, and then we waste it."

SPIEGEL: In the West, there are many compassionate citizens wanting to help Africa. Each year, they donate money and pack their old clothes into collection bags ...

Shikwati: ... and they flood our markets with that stuff. We can buy these donated clothes cheaply at our so-called Mitumba markets. There are Germans who spend a few dollars to get used Bayern Munich or Werder Bremen jerseys, in other words, clothes that that some German kids sent to Africa for a good cause. After buying these jerseys, they auction them off at Ebay and send them back to Germany -- for three times the price. That's insanity ...

SPIEGEL: ... and hopefully an exception.

Shikwati: Why do we get these mountains of clothes? No one is freezing here. Instead, our tailors lose their livlihoods. They're in the same position as our farmers. No one in the low-wage world of Africa can be cost-efficient enough to keep pace with donated products. In 1997, 137,000 workers were employed in Nigeria's textile industry. By 2003, the figure had dropped to 57,000. The results are the same in all other areas where overwhelming helpfulness and fragile African markets collide.

SPIEGEL: Following World War II, Germany only managed to get back on its feet because the Americans poured money into the country through the Marshall Plan. Wouldn't that qualify as successful development aid?

Shikwati: In Germany's case, only the destroyed infrastructure had to be repaired. Despite the economic crisis of the Weimar Republic, Germany was a highly- industrialized country before the war. The damages created by the tsunami in Thailand can also be fixed with a little money and some reconstruction aid. Africa, however, must take the first steps into modernity on its own. There must be a change in mentality. We have to stop perceiving ourselves as beggars. These days, Africans only perceive themselves as victims. On the other hand, no one can really picture an African as a businessman. In order to change the current situation, it would be helpful if the aid organizations were to pull out.

SPIEGEL: If they did that, many jobs would be immediately lost ...

Shikwati: ... jobs that were created artificially in the first place and that distort reality. Jobs with foreign aid organizations are, of course, quite popular, and they can be very selective in choosing the best people. When an aid organization needs a driver, dozens apply for the job. And because it's unacceptable that the aid worker's chauffeur only speaks his own tribal language, an applicant is needed who also speaks English fluently -- and, ideally, one who is also well mannered. So you end up with some African biochemist driving an aid worker around, distributing European food, and forcing local farmers out of their jobs. That's just crazy!

SPIEGEL: The German government takes pride in precisely monitoring the recipients of its funds.

Shikwati: And what's the result? A disaster. The German government threw money right at Rwanda's president Paul Kagame. This is a man who has the deaths of a million people on his conscience -- people that his army killed in the neighboring country of Congo.

SPIEGEL: What are the Germans supposed to do?

Shikwati: If they really want to fight poverty, they should completely halt development aid and give Africa the opportunity to ensure its own survival. Currently, Africa is like a child that immediately cries for its babysitter when something goes wrong. Africa should stand on its own two feet.

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

"Let's join hands as wealthy industrialised nations, and say to the world, we're going to get rid of all our agricultural subsidies together. And so the position of the US Government is we're willing to do so, and we will do so with the, uh, with our fine friends in the European Union."

Let's fantasise that it happens. What results?

Food in the west gets cheaper immediately.

Farmers in the west become competetive, since there is now competition.

Western farmers stop being dependent on handouts.

Western consumers pay less for food at the shop, and pay less in taxes for welfare (since food is cheaper), and pay less in taxes again since the subsidies aren't being paid.

Unproductive farmers go into other lines of work, no longer wasting their abilities on subsidy chasing.

What about the third world? Their agricultural products are suddenly marketable.

They have an incentive to grow for more than just subsistence.

Western imports of food increase, making western consumers more dependent on third world suppliers.

Conditions in third world hellholes become important to the western economy. Tyrants in those hellholes are bad for business, so important voices in the west pressure Western goverments soactually do useful things to depose them.At a stroke, this could be the greatest positive change that western governments could possibly do on their own to improve the material lot of the planet.